The divided centennial - The 1958 Max Planck celebration(s) in Berlin

The government simply cannot accept a keynote address at the State Opera on the anniversary of the Deutsche Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Berlin (Ger man Academy of Sciences) delivered by anyone other than a well-known repres entative of the German Democratic Republic. A leading GDR scientist must gi ve the main speech at the celebrations being organized by our academy. Mayb e we can persuade Professor Hertz to turn down his speaking engagement in W est Berlin, in favor of [giving an address at] the State Opera... The Offic e of the Central Committee has forwarded a recommendation to the Politburo, based on this principle: the independent role of the GDR should be emphasi zed at Planck's jubilee, and the initiatives in West Berlin should be under cut... We must talk to the comrades at the Physikalische Gesellschaft der D DR (Physical Society in the GDR) and the German Academy of Sciences about p roper party policy in such matters, and alert them to their wrong-headed no tion of an undivided German physics. This mistaken concept has caused them to look forward to joint celebrations, in which GDR scientists were to go t o West Germany, and the West German scientists would come to the GDR.(1).